A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy and is known as @agatharoza on Wattpad.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children. Angelica is also the author of Hunt A Killer, a PERFECT SCORE novel, under the pen name A.M. Ellis, which she wrote as an IP for Scholastic in the US.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was short-listed for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aaron Robertson

Aaron Shapiro

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Brett Scott

Who really benefits from a cashless society? 
 
Many of us rarely use cash these days. And the reach of corporations into our lives via cards and apps has never been greater. But what we're told is inevitable is actually the work of powerful interests: the great battle of our time is for ownership of the digital footprints that make up our lives. 
 
Cloudmoney tells a revelatory story about the fusion of big finance and tech, which requires physical cash to be replaced by digital money or 'cloudmoney'. Diving beneath the surface of the global financial system, Brett Scott uncovers a long-established lobbying infrastructure waging a covert war on cash under the banner of progress but at the cost of our privacy, politics and individual freedom. 
 
'A wonderfully revolutionary text' YANIS VAROUFAKIS 
 
'Scott has struck an important vein that is vital in a digital age' FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
'Brilliant, fascinating and utterly accessible' KATE RAWORTH, author of Doughnut Economics

Cloudmoney

Why the War on Cash Endangers Our Freedom

Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for our Wallets

Eric Collins

At a time when half of Black households in the UK live in persistent poverty - over twice as many as their white counterparts - We Don't Need Permission argues that investing in Black and under-represented entrepreneurs to create successful businesses is the surest, fastest socio-economic game-changer. 
 
Long-lasting economic empowerment - from education to health outcomes - is key to solving the multiple problems that result from systemic racism and sexism. And it is the best way to close the inequality gaps that have hampered and continue to hinder Black people and all women too. To address this problem head on, Eric Collins co-founded venture capital firm Impact X Capital Partners to invest in under-represented entrepreneurs in the UK and Europe. 
 
In We Don't Need Permission, Collins identifies ten key principles of successful entrepreneurship, and reveals how it's possible to change a system that has helped some, while holding others back. The book not only aims to inspire and motivate under-represented people to take their future and economic destiny into their own hands, but will demand of current business leaders and organizations that they do business better. It's time to stop waiting for someone else to give permission and to start boldly making the world we want to see.

We Don't Need Permission

How black business can change our world

Dan McCrum

When journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate the hot new tech company challenging Silicon Valley, everything about Wirecard looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up around the world, it was reporting runaway growth and the CEO even wore a black turtleneck in tribute to Steve Jobs. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. 
 
As McCrum dug deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more dangerous than he ever imagined: a world of short sellers and whistleblowers, pornographers and private militias, hackers and spies. Before long he realised that he wasn't the only one in pursuit. Shadowy figures were following him through the streets of London, high-flying lawyers were sending ominous letters to his boss, and he was named as the prime suspect in a criminal inquiry. The race was on to prove his suspicions and clear his name. 
 
Money Men is the astonishing inside story of Wirecard's multi-billion-dollar fraud, Europe's biggest new tech darling revealed as a house of cards. Uncovering fake bank accounts, fake offices and possibly even a fake death, McCrum offers a searing exposé that will finally lay bare the truth.

Money Men

A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth

Owen Walker

The proud owner of a sprawling £14m estate in the Cotswolds, boasting a stable of eventing horses, a fleet of supercars and neighbouring the royal family, Neil Woodford was the most celebrated and successful British investor of his generation. 
 
He spent years beating the market; betting against the dot com bubble in the 1990s and the banks before the financial crash in 2008, making blockbuster returns for his investors and earning himself a reputation of 'the man who made Middle England rich'. 
 
But, in 2019, after a stream of poorly-judged investments, Woodford's asset management company collapsed, trapping hundreds of thousands of rainy-day savers in his flagship fund and hanging £3.6bn in the balance. 
 
In Built on a Lie, Financial Times reporter Owen Walker reveals the disastrous failings of Woodford, the greed at the heart of his operation, the flaws of an industry in thrall to its star performers and the dangers of limited regulation. With exclusive access to Woodford's inner circle, Walker will reveal the full, jaw-dropping story of Europe's biggest investment scandal in a decade.

Built on a Lie

The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England’s Money

Adam Tooze

When the news first emerged from China about a new virus in December 2019, risk-averse financial markets were alert to its potential for disruption. Yet they could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow in COVID-19's wake, as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged, investors panicked, and even gold was sold. 
 
In a matter of weeks, the world's economy was brought to an abrupt halt. Flights were grounded; supply chains broken; industries from tourism to oil to hospitality collapsed overnight, leaving hundreds of millions of people unemployed. Central banks responded with unprecedented interventions, just to keep their economies on life-support. For the first time since the second world war, the entire global economic system contracted. 
 
This book tells the story of that shutdown. We do not yet know how this story ends, or what new world we will find on the other side. In this fast-paced, compelling and at times shocking analysis, Adam Tooze surveys the wreckage, and looks at where we might be headed next.

Shutdown

How Covid Shook the World's Economy

Sebastian Mallaby

From an award-winning financial historian comes the gripping, character-driven story of venture capital and the world it made 
 
Innovations rarely come from "experts." Jeff Bezos was not a bookseller; Elon Musk was not in the auto industry. When it comes to innovation, a legendary venture capitalist told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. Most attempts at discovery fail, but a few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives venture capital, Silicon Valley, the tech sector, and, by extension, the world. 
 
Drawing on unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time, award-winning financial historian Sebastian Mallaby tells the story of this strange tribe of financiers who have funded the world's most successful companies, from Google to SpaceX to Alibaba. With a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis, The Power Law makes sense of the seeming randomness of success in venture capital, an industry that relies, for good and ill, on gut instinct and personality rather than spreadsheets and data. We learn the unvarnished truth about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in the history of tech, from the comedy of errors that was the birth of Apple to the venture funding that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber to the industry's notorious lack of women and ethnic minorities. 
 
Now the power law echoes around the world: it has transformed China's digital economy beyond recognition, and London is one of the top cities for venture capital investment. By taking us so deeply into the VCs' game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

The Power Law

Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption

Gregory Zuckerman

Jim Simons is the greatest moneymaker in modern financial history. His record bests those of legendary investors, including Warren Buffett, George Soros and Ray Dalio. Yet Simons and his strategies are shrouded in mystery. The financial industry has long craved a look inside Simons's secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies and veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman delivers the goods. 
 
After a legendary career as a mathematician and a stint breaking Soviet codes, Simons set out to conquer financial markets with a radical approach. Simons hired physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists - most of whom knew little about finance - to amass piles of data and build algorithms hunting for the deeply hidden patterns in global markets. Experts scoffed, but Simons and his colleagues became some of the richest in the world, their strategy of creating mathematical models and crunching data embraced by almost every industry. Simons and his team used their wealth to upend the worlds of politics, philanthropy and science. They weren't prepared for the backlash. 
 
In this fast-paced narrative, Zuckerman examines how Simons launched a quantitative revolution on Wall Street, and reveals the impact that Simons, the quiet billionaire king of the quants, has had on worlds well beyond finance.

The Man Who Solved the Market

How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019

Robin Wigglesworth

Index funds are perhaps the most widely influential investment vehicles available. They have revolutionised investing, saving millions of people untold billions of dollars in fees that would otherwise have gone to fund managers. It is no exaggeration to say that the rise of passive investing is probably one of the most consequential financial inventions of the past half-century. It is rewiring markets and reshaping the finance industry. 
 
Yet some detractors say that index investing is an insidious disease and with their rapid expansion, and grip on the financial market, index funds may have cataclysmic consequences that we aren't even aware of yet. What might the socio-economic risks of wide-spread passive investing be? What are the longer-term consequences to capitalism? And what does the future look like for the investment landscape? 
 
Through exclusive interviews with key industry giants, Robin Wigglesworth, the Financial Times' New York-based markets editor, reveals the thrilling and untold history of the revolutionists behind the invention of index funds and investigates one of the most pressing financial uncertainties of our time.

Trillions

How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever

Simon Clark

Will Louch

AS FEATURED IN BBC TWO'S BILLION DOLLAR DOWNFALL: THE DEALMAKER DOCUMENTARY 
 
Two Wall Street reporters investigate the man entrusted with millions to make profits and end poverty but now stands accused of masterminding one of the biggest, most brazen frauds in history. 
 
'Gripping' Guardian 
 
*** 
 
Arif Naqvi was a man with an immeasurable dream: to end world suffering, poverty and disease. His vision? Capitalism used for good, progress and profit. 
 
He persuaded politicians he could help stabilize the Middle East after 9/11 by providing jobs. He got Bill Gates to help him start a billion-dollar fund to improve health care in poor countries. He won the support of Obama's administration and was even appointed to boards by the UN and Interpol. 
 
The only problem? In 2019 Arif Naqvi was arrested on charges of money laundering and misappropriating hundreds of millions of dollars. He now faces up to 291 years in jail. This is the true, jaw-dropping investigation into the smoke and mirrors world of The Key Man. 
 
*** 
 
'Impeccably researched and sumptuous in its detail . . . It's a page-turner' The Economist 
 
'This book tells the story brilliantly. . . Well-paced and cleverly organised. It also draws some devastating conclusions' The Sunday Times 
 
'A pacy and deeply-reported tale' Financial Times 
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE FT MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 
AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Key Man

How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale

Rupal Patel

The Bank of England

Jack Meaning

Why are all my clothes made in Asia? 
How do I get a pay-rise? 
And what even is money? 
 
Join Britain's most venerable financial institution for a rip-roaring crash-course in economics. From financial crises to Freddo prices, it will help you make sense of your job, your life and maybe your world. 
_ 
 
'A well-written treat . . . Using examples including the Bank of England canteen, The Simpsons and Beanie Babies, the authors encourage us all to understand, and even challenge, what economists do' Professor David Spiegelhalter, author of The Art of Statistics 
 
'A well-timed attempt to show the public what goes on inside the Bank of England - and familiarise them with some basic economic concepts . . . Punctuated with jaunty anecdotes and neat examples' Guardian 
 
'An entertaining and essential read at a time when understanding how our money, governments and banks interact has never felt more important' Laura Whateley, author of Money: A User's Guide

Can’t We Just Print More Money?

Economics in Ten Simple Questions

Adrian Wooldridge

Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? 
 
Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocractic system. 
 
Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.

The Aristocracy of Talent

How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

Sara Davies

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER! THE #1 BESTSELLING BUSINESS BIOGRAPHY OF 2022. 
'Determined, focused and full of heart - this book encapsulates all that has made Sara Davies the powerhouse she is.' Giovanna Fletcher 
 
From student halls to Dragons Den (and Strictly Come Dancing!), this is Sara Davies MBE's story of building her multi-million-pound business from scratch and why we can all make it big. 
------------------------ 
Sara Davies is the queen of crafts. Whilst working as an intern in a small company, Sara noticed a gap in the industry and decided to pursue it. By the time she left university, she was running a business with a half million-pound turnover from her student bedroom. When she became the youngest of BBC 1's iconic Dragons, that turnover was £25 million. Today, she is one of Britain's biggest business names. 
 
In her first book - as full of warmth, wit and wisdom as she is - Sara shares what it took to get there: from manning factories overnight with her mam and dad to hitting the trade shows of Las Vegas alone, armed with little more than ambition and passion. 
 
We Can All Make It chronicles everything from what she looks for in a business investment to how she manages to find time to enjoy family life while running an empire. From the buzz of witnessing your latest product sell out, dancing the cha cha as you broadcast live to 96 million American homes, thriving after lockdown to being at the head of the biggest tables, Sara's unique storytelling answers all the questions for women in business today. 
 
Praise for Sara Davies 
 
'A business whizz' - Radio Times 
'A brilliant read.' Steph McGovern 
'Page-turning, inspiring' - Gethin Jones 
'She is amazing!' - Alison Hammond 
'Energy, focus, commitment: she's relentless!' - Peter Jones

We Can All Make It

the star of Dragons' Den shares her secrets of success

Robert Harris

'Harris is a master of pace and entertainment' Observer 
 
'Could scarcely be more of the moment' The Times 
 
Nothing spreads like fear . . . 
 
In the secretive inner circle of the ultra-rich, Alex Hoffmann is a legend. 
 
He has developed an algorithm for playing the financial markets that generates billions of pounds - and feeds on panic. 
 
When one day his system is threatened by a terrifying intruder who breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside home, his life becomes a waking nightmare of violence and paranoia. 
 
But who is trying to destroy him? And is it already too late? 
 
'There are moments when this book feels so up to date it could have been written next week . . . spookily exciting' Express

The Fear Index

Julian Hoppit

It has always been an important part of British self-image to see the United Kingdom as an ancient, organic and sensibly managed place, in striking contrast to the convulsions of other European countries. Yet, as Julian Hoppit makes clear in this fascinating and surprising book, beneath the complacent surface the United Kingdom has in fact been in a constant, often very tense argument with itself about how it should be run and, most significantly, who should pay for what. 
 
 The book takes its argument from an eighteenth century cartoon which shows the central state as the 'Dreadful Monster', gorging itself at the dinner table on all the taxes it can grab. Meanwhile the 'Poor Relations' - Scotland, Wales and Ireland, both poor because of tax but also poor in the sense of needing special treatment - are viewed in London as an endless 'drain on the state'. With drastically different levels of prosperity, population, industry, agriculture and accessibility between the United Kingdom's different nations, what is a fair basis for paying for the state?

The Dreadful Monster and its Poor Relations

Taxing, Spending and the United Kingdom, 1707-2021

Guy Hands

Diagnosed at the age of five as severely dyslexic, Guy Hands managed to overcome the challenges of school to start his own private equity company, and in The Dealmaker he shares the ups and downs of a tumultuous career as a serial entrepreneur. He gives blow-by-blow descriptions of the huge deals that he has done over the years, first at Nomura and then as head of his own company, Terra Firma. He explains how he approaches each opportunity, whether that involves cinema chains, pubs, aircraft leasing or green energy. And he offers a brutally honest appraisal of the deal that almost bankrupted him - the acquisition of multinational music recording and publishing company EMI in 2007, just as a global financial crash loomed on the horizon. Above all, he gives the reader a real sense of what it's like inside the secretive world of private equity, describing in frank detail the pressures and rewards involved. 
 
Insightful and page-turning, The Dealmaker will prove inspirational and essential reading for all those who want to understand how huge business negotiations are done, and what makes one of private equity's biggest players tick.

The Dealmaker

Lessons from a Life in Private Equity

Michael Lewis

'It's a foreboding,' she said. 'A knowing that something is looming around the corner. Like how when the seasons change you can smell Fall in the air right before the leaves change and the wind turns cold.' 
 
 In January 2020, as people started dying from a new virus in Wuhan, China, few really understood the magnitude of what was happening. Except, that is, a small group of scientific misfits who in their different ways had been obsessed all their lives with how viruses spread and replicated - and with why the governments and the institutions that were supposed to look after us, kept making the same mistakes time and again. 
 
 This group saw what nobody else did. A pandemic was coming. We weren't prepared. 
 
 The Premonition is the extraordinary story of a group who anticipated, traced and hunted the coronavirus; who understood the need to think differently, to learn from history, to question everything; and to do all of this fast, in order to act, to save lives, communities, society itself. It's a story about the workings of the human mind; about the failures and triumphs of human judgement and imagination. It's the story of how we got to now.

The Premonition

A Pandemic Story

Javier Blas

Jack Farchy

'Gripping' Economist 
'Jaw-dropping' Sunday Times 
'Riveting' Financial Times 
'Fascinating' Reuters 
 
We are entering an age of energy crises and food shortages. This book reveals why. 
 
Meet the swashbuckling traders who supply the world with energy, food and metal. 
 
Their goal: To make billions by buying and selling raw materials - flogging Russian gas to Europe, Saudi oil to America and Congolese metals to Silicon Valley. 
 
Their methods: Whatever it takes - whether funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin's sanction-stricken Kremlin, schmoozing Russian metal oligarchs after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or striking deals with the Libyan rebels at the height of the Arab Spring. 
 
These are the commodity traders. You've probably never heard of them. But, like it or not, you're one of their customers. 
 
 
*Shortlisted for the Financial Times &amp; McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award* 
*A Financial Times and Economist Book of the Year* 
 
'Shows how much money and global influence is concentrated in the hands of a tiny group . . . Remarkable . . . As the authors roam from oilfield to wheatfield, they reveal information so staggering you almost gasp' Sunday Times 
 
'A globe-spanning corporate thriller, full of intrigue and double dealing . . . Changes how we see the world, often in horrifying ways' Spectator 
 
'A rich archive of ripping yarns . . . The high level narrative is gripping enough. But it is the details of what these freewheeling companies actually got up to that give the book a thriller-like quality' Financial Times 
 
'Some of the stories could be straight out of John le Carré. The difference is they're true' Andrew Neil

The World for Sale

Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources

Eric Williams

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

'If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams's study supremely passes that test' Seymour Drescher 
 
 Arguing that the slave trade was at the heart of Britain's economic progress, Eric Williams's landmark 1944 study revealed the connections between capitalism and racism, and has influenced generations of historians ever since. Williams traces the rise and fall of the Atlantic slave trade through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to show how it laid the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, and how racism arose as a means of rationalising an immoral economic programme. Most significantly, he showed how slavery was only abolished when it ceased to become financially viable, exploding the myth of emancipation as a mark of Britain's moral progress. 
 
'Its thesis is a starting point for a new generation of scholarship' New Yorker

Capitalism and Slavery

Ranjay Gulati

'Gulati shows what it takes to walk the talk on purpose ... Insightful, practical and timely' Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again 
 
Unlock your corporate purpose, create social value and boost profits 
 
Many companies have used purpose as a corporate buzzword to appear virtuous internally, and look good to the outside world. But a poor understanding of the importance of real purpose can have detrimental consequences for the profitability and sustainability of a business. 
 
Deep Purpose is the essential guide to putting purpose at the core of a company, and in doing so, understanding its very soul. Drawing together years of research, including analysis of multinational corporations from Danone and PepsiCo to Microsoft and Patagonia, Harvard professor Ranjay Gulati has identified eight conceptual barriers that are dooming leaders and their companies to a more superficial engagement with purpose. In this book, he shows you how to understand and overcome these obstacles, in order to find your company's deep purpose and supercharge its capacity to serve all stakeholders and shareholders. 
 
By fusing commercial and social logic, business leaders can enhance financial performance, boost employee morale and retention, and leave a positive mark on society. Deep Purpose has the power to transform the business landscape and usher in a new era of ethical corporate leadership.

Deep Purpose

The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies

Ram Charan

From the million-copy-bestselling author of Execution 
 
'Ingenious . . . An insightful and practical guide for leaders and practitioners at every level.' Forbes 
 
Welcome to the age of big tech. The old rules no longer apply. 
 
How do companies build a competitive advantage in the digital age? In this lively, accessible guide, Ram Charan - million-copy-bestselling author and advisor to some of the world's top CEOs - reveals that the tech giants have radically rewritten the rules of business. If you want to win, you need to learn to play a new game. 
 
Delving into the inner workings of the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Alibaba, Charan uncovers the six rules that the digital giants use to stay ahead: from their emphasis on creating corporate 'ecosystems', to the way they approach team organisation and moneymaking. And he outlines how to use these rules to transform your business, starting today. 
 
'One of the world's preeminent counselors to CEOs.' Harvard Business Review

Rethinking Competitive Advantage

New Rules for the Digital Age

Spencer Jakab

January 2021: in one week, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets forum seemingly accomplish the impossible - they bring down some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street. Their weapon is GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly become the most-traded security on the planet and the subject of intense media coverage. 
 
The Revolution That Wasn't is the riveting story of how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, and of the real architects (and winners) of the GameStop rally. Drawing on his years as a stock analyst at a major bank, Jakab exposes technological and financial innovations such as Robinhood's habit-forming smartphone app as ploys to get our dollars within the larger story of evolving social and economic pressures. The surprising truth? What appeared to be a watershed moment - a revolution that stripped the ultra-powerful hedge funds of their market influence and placed power back in the hands of everyday investors, only tilted the odds further in the house's favour. 
 
In this nuanced analysis, Jakab shines a light on the often-misunderstood profit motives and financial mechanisms to show how this so-called revolution is, on balance, a bonanza for Wall Street. But, Jakab argues that there really is a way for ordinary investors to beat the pros: by refusing to play their game.

The Revolution That Wasn't

How GameStop and Reddit Made Wall Street Even Richer

Anne Boden

After a lengthy career at the top of some of Britain's leading Banks, Anne Boden had become disillusioned with the status quo - the financial crash had broken trust in the whole sector and there seemed to be little appetite to make most of emerging technologies to revolutionise customer experience. Increasingly frustrated with the inertia, she decided to do something radical - she set up her own bank, Starling. 
 
In BANKING ON IT, Anne reveals the awe-inspiring story of how she broke through bureaucracy, tackled prejudice and successfully countered widespread suspicion to realise her vision for the future of consumer banking and, in doing so, trigger a new movement that would revolutionise the entire banking industry.

Banking On It

How I Disrupted an Industry and Changed the Way We Manage our Money Forever

How I Disrupted an Industry

Mark Tighe

Paul Rowan

Over the course of fifteen years, John Delaney ran the Football Association of Ireland as his own personal fiefdom. He had his critics, but his power was never seriously challenged until last year, when Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan published a sequence of stories in the Sunday Times containing damaging revelations about his personal compensation and the parlous financial situation of the FAI. Delaney's reputation as a great financial manager was left in tatters. He resigned under pressure, and the FAI was left hoping for a massive bail-out from the Irish taxpayer. 
 
In Champagne Football, Tighe and Rowan dig deep into the story of Delaney's career and of the FAI's slide into ruin. They show how he surrounded himself with people whose personal loyalty he could count on, and a board that failed to notice that the association's finances were shot. They detail Delaney's skilful cultivation of opinion-formers outside the FAI. And they document the culture of excess that Delaney presided over and benefited from, to the detriment of the organization he led. 
 
Champagne Football is a gripping, sometimes darkly hilarious and often enraging piece of reporting by the award-winning journalists who finally pulled back the curtain on the FAI's mismanagement.

Champagne Football

John Delaney and the Betrayal of Irish Football: The Inside Story

Joseph Henrich

'A landmark in social thought. Henrich may go down as the most influential social scientist of the first half of the twenty-first century' MATTHEW SYED 
 
Do you identify yourself by your profession or achievements, rather than your family network? Do you cultivate your unique attributes and goals? If so, perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. 
 
Unlike most who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, nonconformist, analytical and control-oriented. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically peculiar? What part did these differences play in our history, and what do they mean for our collective identity? 
 
Joseph Henrich, who developed the game-changing concept of WEIRD, uses leading-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics and evolutionary biology to explore how changing family structures, marriage practices and religious beliefs in the Middle Ages shaped the Western mind, laying the foundations for the world we know today. Brilliant, provocative, engaging and surprising, this landmark study will revolutionize your understanding of who - and how - we are now. 
 
'Phenomenal ... The only theory I am aware of that attempts to explain broad patterns of human psychology on a global scale' Washington Post 
 
'You will never look again in the same way at your own seemingly universal values' Uta Frith, Professor of Cognitive Development, University College London

The Weirdest People in the World

How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Silvia Federici

A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist societies was transformed into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms. It is a study of indigenous traditions crushed, of the enclosure of women's reproductive powers within the nuclear family, and of how our modern world was forged in blood.

Caliban and the Witch

Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

John Kenneth Galbraith

'One of the most engrossing books I have ever read' Daily Telegraph 
 
John Kenneth Galbraith's now-classic account of the 1929 stock market collapse remains the definitive book on the most disastrous cycle of boom and bust in modern times. 
 
Vividly depicting the causes, effects, aftermath and long-term consequences of financial meltdown, Galbraith also describes the people and the corporations who were affected by the catastrophe. With its depiction of the 'gold-rush fantasy' ingrained in America's psychology, The Great Crash 1929 remains a penetrating study of human greed and folly.

The Great Crash 1929

James Rickards

'Let's hope he's wrong' Financial Times 
 
Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they result in countries stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into inflation, recession and real violence. 
 
In this fifth anniversary edition, James Rickards concludes that currency wars are as problematic now as they were in 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Europe and Chinese and currency manipulation are all indicators that we're entering an even more dangerous phase. 
 
In this post-Trump, post-Brexit world of political uncertainty, James Rickards, New York Times bestseller and Strategic Adviser to the US intelligence community, argues that this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The world is facing growing threats to its national security - from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Left unchecked, the next currency war could end with massive casualties on all sides.

Currency Wars

The Making of the Next Global Crisis

Steven Levy

Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from the simple website Zuckerberg's first built from his dorm room in his Sophomore year. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the biggest companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing fake news accounts, the handling of its users' personal data and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation. 
 
Based on years of exclusive reporting and interviews with Facebook's key executives and employees, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Steven Levy's sweeping narrative digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.

Facebook

The Inside Story

Anastasia Nesvetailova

Ronen Palan

Financial malpractice, we're told, is an aberration: the actions of a few bad apples gaming the system. In Sabotage, political scientists Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan blow this fiction apart, showing that sabotage is not an anomaly, but part of the business model of finance - and always has been. 
 
Misleading investors, falsifying figures and taking advantage of 'the dumbest person in the room' - they're actually the surest way to a bonus. If you want to make money in the industry, you need to sabotage either your clients, your competitors or the government (or all three). Talking to industry insiders, economists and high net worth customers, the authors show us how the idea of sabotage not only makes sense of all past economic crises, but must also be at the heart of all future regulations.

Sabotage

The Business of Finance

Alice Ross

Investing responsibly is one of the most powerful ways that you can fight climate change. 
 
No longer a niche sector for rebel fund managers, conscious investing has the potential to raise huge sums of money to the companies and organisations on the front line fighting the climate crisis and make investors positive returns in the process. 
 
In this essential introduction to green investing, Alice Ross shows you how you can turn your savings and pensions, however big or small, into a force for change. You will learn: 
 
- Which sectors are leading the charge by developing cutting-edge solutions; from smart farming to renewable energy 
- How to cut through 'alphabet soup' jargon and identify 'greenwashing' 
- The ways you can maximise your economic power and hold those you're investing in to account

Investing To Save The Planet

How Your Money Can Make a Difference

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

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